VOWELS and CONSONANTS

Phonemes of English  CONSONANTS  When describing a consonant, use the following parameters:  VOICE: do your vocal cords vibrate?.  If you feel vibration, this means that your vocal c

 Phonology deals with the following

questions:

 1 Of all the sounds in a language, which are predictable?

 2 What is the phonetic context that

allows us to predict the occurrence of

these sounds?

 3 Which sounds affect the meaning of words?

 What is a phoneme?

 A class of speech sounds that are

identified by a native speaker as the same sound is called a phoneme

 The different phonetic realizations of a

phoneme are called allophones

Phonemes of English

 CONSONANTS

 When describing a consonant, use the following parameters:

 VOICE: do your vocal cords vibrate?

 PLACE: Which cavity is involved? Which articulators are used?

 MANNER: how is the sound produced?

 Try putting a hand lightly on your throat and then say the following words, drawing out the initial

sounds

 If you feel vibration, this means that your vocal cords are open and the sound in question is a

voiceless sound If, on the other hand, you feel some vibration or a buzzing feeling, this is due to the vibration of your vocal cords which are closed together This means that the sound you are

making is a voiced sound

Manner of Articulation

 How is the air stream modified by the

vocal tract to produce the sound?

 Stops : Sounds that are stopped

completely in the oral cavity for a brief period of time

 Fricatives: If the air stream is not

completely stopped because of a narrow passage in the oral cavity that causes

friction and turbulance

 Affricates: a stop closure + slow release

(fricative)

 Liquids: some obstruction formed by the

articulators, but not narrow enough to

cause any real constriction

 Glides: slight closure of the articulators,

they are almost like vowels Therefore,

they are often called semi-vowels

CONSONANTS VS: VOWELS

 Consonants are produced with some closure

or restriction in the vocal tract as the air

stream is pushed through the glottis out of the mouth.

 When vowels are produced, there is nothing

in the vocal tract that narrows the passage

such that it would obstruct the free flow of

the air stream That is, vowels are produced

without any articulators touching or even

coming close together

 Vowels are the most audible, SONORANT (or intense) sounds in speech

 Vocal fold vibration is the sound source for vowels Therefore, all vowels are, almost always, VOICED

 Unlike consonants, there is neither place

of constriction or closure (place of

articulation), nor a specific manner of

articulation

 The shape of the vocal tract determines

the quality of the vowel There are several ways in which we can change the shape of the vocal tract:

 1 raising or lowering the body of the

tongue

 2 pushing the tongue forward or pulling it back

 3 rounding the lips

VOWEL CLASSIFICATION

 1 How high is the tongue?

 HIGH , MID , LOW

 2 Is the tongue advanced or retracted?

 FRONT , CENTRAL , BACK

 3 Are the lips rounded?

 ROUNDED , UNROUNDED

 4 Is the tongue tense?

 TENSE, LAX

 Compare the vowels in ‘beat’ and ‘bit’, or

‘bait’ and ‘bet’

 TENSE vowels ([i],[u],[e],[o]) are

produced with greater tension of the

tongue muscles than their LAX

counterparts (all others)

 TENSE vowels are phonetically longer

than LAX vowels

 If two sounds are separate phonemes, then they are contrastive (in terms of meaning)

 If the two phones are allophones of the same phoneme, then they are

non-contrastive

 To determine whether a given pair of

sounds is contrastive, linguists look for minimal pairs

 Aspiration: The period between the

release of the closure of a consonant and the start of the vocal cord activity for the vowel that comes after it This period is usually felt as a puff of air

 Aspiration occurs on all voiceless stops occurring

 as the first sound in a stressed syllable

 For English, aspiration is not employed to create a meaning difference

Minimal Pairs

 A minimal pair is a pair of words with

different meanings with exactly the same

 pronunciation except for one sound that differs

 Examples:

 [tek] vs [tep] "take" vs "tape"

 [tim] vs [dim] "team" vs "deam"